With the shortage of primers, and all components, the avilability of a chosen primer my convince one that they can't reload, if their choice isn't on the shelf.
However, I recently learned from a large warehouse that type of primer isn't all that critical as a general rule. The guy I talked to said he was using small rifle primers to fire up his 9MM loads with perfect performance. So I did a bit of experimenting and found that they work just fine in a light 38 revolver, as does magnum and standard primers. When fired in an empty case, the small rifle primers have a much hotter flame than small pistol, but not as hot as small pistol magnum. I didn't experiment with the large sizes and didn't have any small rifle magnum to compare. However I've always used magnum primers in both rifle and pisol with fast powders and no negative results, or high pressure. A hot primer in my experiance is simply good insurance that the powder will light up, even in deep freezing temperatures.
The man I talked to said that when using a hot primer one should start with the mid range charge in a manual, not max, to see if pressure is effected, then load accordingly.
Also, I believe in the large primers that the metal is a bit harder to indent, more so than small primers, so if your gun has a weak firing pin impact, try a few primed empty cases to be sure they light up, before building loads. With the little 38 I tried, a previous owner had clipped the hammer spring to make double action easier, but it would only fire some brands of small pistol primers, and would not reliably light up magnum or rifle primers. Building a spool to put the spring under what I believe would be close to original pressure cured the problem and makes it light anything under the hammer.
A good test for exposed hammer type guns, when testing the ignition of stouter primers, is to hold the trigger back and drop the hammer from just below full cock. Double action gives a shorter hammer fall than full cock on all the double action revolvers I've ever used, so on a double action, watch how far double action draws the hammer back, then release it from a slightly shorter distence. This will proove that double action will fire your primeers consistently. (My test gun faulted heavy on double action.)
